Originally published at: JD Vance’s ‘Purpose’ - TPM – Talking Points Memo
Hello, it’s the weekend. This is The Weekender 
A clip made the rounds this week in which chief weirdo JD Vance said the “purpose” of post-menopausal women was to help raise children. This sort of thing falls outside the the normal discourse. Many find it uncomfortable or unusual to talk about the ultimate purpose…
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Re: Deciding other people’s purpose -
The work on the online right has been to add an intellectual veneer over their Christian nationalist framework. That’s why it seems so weird to the rest of us. They really want to say “God put you here to…” but they can’t. Instead, they talk in pseudoscience abstractions.
Jordan Peterson is a good example of this. His shtick is attempting to explain why we should all act like Christians even though he doesn’t believe in a literal Jesus.
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A couple of things:
One: post-menopausal women have already raised their children, if they had them. No one is interested in doing this for someone else, even for their own kids. And if we’re raising the children, what are the parents doing instead of raising their own kids? Answers required from Vance.
Second: late Soviet America: they do know that the Soviet Union broke up after some 70 years and is not declared a success, right?
Third: Words of Wisdom: TIFBG only enjoys insults that he slings. Someone slings back at him, his fee-fees get hurt. It’s time to start hitting back with a barrage of his failures and stupidity. The media isn’t going to do it, so it must come from the campaign and its surrogates. Time to take the gloves off with this clown, way past time.
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Check this out.
Barr was a deep state soldier protecting an even deeper state. A very strange and seditious form of tyranny was in play, and still is. so bad that even our own justice system had to let him get away. The entanglements with Kissinger and Nixon show a sinister back channel of creeps at work to undermine democracy in favor of privilege.
Simes, who was born in Moscow, emigrated to the United States in 1973. He served as an informal foreign policy adviser to President Richard Nixon before leading the Center for the National Interest for nearly three decades.
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Are there enough incels to elect JD Vance?
The Shillbilly’s aggressive weirdness isn’t designed to win over voters. It’s part of an attack on democracy that could easily make him president.https://i-know-how-much-you-care.ghost.io/are-there-enough-incels-to-elect-jd-vance/
— L O L G O P (@LOLGOP) August 17, 2024
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I really wish that the MSM would pick up on he fact that DJT is not really running for President… He is running for King. Any criticism is an illegal insult and must be punished.
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The Trump campaign of Donnie and JD are like soldiers who continually sh_t in their own mess kits. Their instincts are consistently off-putting and they have a learning disorder. So be it.
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“A clip made the rounds this week in which chief weirdo JD Vance said the “purpose” of post-menopausal women was to help raise children.”
… … … …
Ya post menopausal women JD… why not call them “grandma”? And mom? What’s she supposed to do in your world? Clean the kitchen only? In handcuffs? Beaten regularly to keep her in line?
There are many really nasty terms I could apply to JD Vance. But it’s early yet where I live and I’ll try to be decent for a little while longer.
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That’s like saying they believe in the Golden Rule, do unto others, etc. etc which does not appear in the bible.
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What is it with Vance’s description of some women as “post menopausal”. Is he an expert in female reproductive physiology? Where’d he get his training? Any research publications from him I should know about? (Reproductive physiology… specifically ovarian cancer was my area of research for 40+ years)
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JD Vance is an authoritarian creep who should never be allowed near power. But this article is completely wrong about his menopause comments, as are all of the commenters here and virtually everywhere.
Vance was referring to the “grandmother hypothesis,” explained here in Scientific American:
"The origin of menopause has puzzled evolutionary biologists for the last half-century. Three new studies attempt illumination. The real question, though, is probably not: Why menopause? Rather, it is: Why do women long outlive their fertility?
Human ovaries tend to shut down by age 50 or even younger, yet women commonly live on healthily for decades. This flies in the face of evolutionary theory that losing fertility should be the end of the line, because once breeding stops, evolution can no longer select for genes that promote survival.
The most popular explanation, the “grandmother hypothesis,” argues that a generous post-reproductive life span makes sense if a grandmother improves the survival and reproduction of her grandchildren, thus ensuring continuation of her own genes—including genes that contribute to longevity."
The grandmother hypothesis is controversial, and possibly wrong. It is, however, a respectable evolutionary theory and has nothing to do with authoritarianism or Christian nationalism or Francis Bacon or the rest of this overanalyzed nonsense.
Taking Vance down shouldn’t be hard. Do better.
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Niall Ferguson is a stone cold intellectual joke propped up by the Right, just like George Will, Buckley and the rest.
Ambitious boys straining to mewl the latest handy sentiment at the master’s command.
We need to stop imagining there was ever a time of good faith in the media.
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I like what Josh described here:
plutocracy sitting atop a Wild West market, eventually taken over by an autocrat with strict Christian pretensions.
I’m not sure how “wild west” the market Republicans want will be, since five people own just about everything.
Perhaps it’s a market where five people can do any zany business thing they want, assured that the government will replace any of their losses or fix the damage they did.
After all, the rich can’t be expected to pay for it out of their profits, can they?
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“I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence … She certainly attacks me personally. She actually called me weird.”
Little Donnie is upset because Kamala is being mean to him!
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That’s a pretty wide brush you use.
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I want to commend Joe Ragazzo for his opening thoughts about conservatives tendency to assign ‘purpose’ to people and to nature in general. The entire segment was insightful and well stated.
But, long story short, this kind of thinking largely died out as people like Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton and John Locke introduced new ways to understand and interpret the world. . . .
We don’t legislate or organize society based on nature alone. Yet, this appeal to Natural Law rears its ugly head a lot in the religious segments of the right. It’s why same-sex marriage was bad. It’s why trans people are bad. It’s why IVF is bad. If you have a worldview that assumes everything in the natural world was created with a specific purpose, the logical next step is to lament anyone and anything that violates that purpose. It is a tool for control.
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I think the wide brush is being used by those who think a reference to evolutionary biology is an attack on Enlightenment values. But maybe that’s just me.
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Peterson another ambitious manchild chained to the Right because that’s where the money to prop up shites comes from -
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As for Trump, she captures his indifference to the plight of the Uyghurs, China’s oppressed Muslim minority. She conveyed the concerns of both Democratic and Republican leaders to Trump, and asked that he raise the issue with Xi Jinping.
“After the meeting, President Trump reported back to me that when he asked President Xi about the Uyghurs, Xi had responded, ‘Those people like being in those camps.’ To which I replied, ‘That’s what authoritarians always say.’”
Trump is enamored by strongmen. Heck, he wants to be one. He has called for voiding the US constitution and making himself dictator for a day. He pursues bromances with Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un.
He has also heaped praise on the Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, who recently stole an election. In a recent interview, Trump gave Maduro props for his supposed law enforcement skills.
“If you look at Caracas, it was known for being a very dangerous city, and now it’s very safe,” Trump said. “It’s safer than many of our cities.”
For the record, the Global Organized Crime Index gives Venezuela the world’s highest crime rate.
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